Synopsis

Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person's life chances. Success in life should depend on people's choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.

RICARDO PAES DE BARROS holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago and a Post PhD from the International Growth Center at Yale University, USA. Since 1979, he has been a researcher at the Instituto de Pesquisa Economica Aplicada (IPEA) where he has been conducting research on inequality, education, poverty, and labor markets in Brazil and Latin America. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and a Director of Social Studies of IPEA. He has been awarded the Haralambos Simedionis and Mario Henrique Simonsen prizes, and admitted by the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva into the Ordem Nacional do Merito Cientifico. FRANSISCO H. G. FERREIRA is a Lead Economist with the Development Research Group at the World Bank and has published widely on both theoretical and empirical issues related to inequality. Chico (as he is known) is a coeditor of the Journal of Economic Inequality and a former editor of Economia (the journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association--LACEA). He was a codirector of the team that wrote the World Development Report 2006, on equity and development. He holds a BSc (Economics), MSc, and PhD from the London School of Economics, UK, and was a professor of economics in Rio de Janeiro between 1999 and 2002. JAIME SAAVEDRA CHANDUVI is Manager for the Poverty and Gender Group, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region of the World Bank. His major areas of interest include poverty reduction, labor markets, and social policies. He was Executive Director and Principal Researcher at Grupo de Analisis para el Desarollo (GRADE) in Lima, and a Principal Advisor to the Ministry of Labor and Social Promotion in Peru. He has been President of the Executive Committee of the Network on Inequity and Poverty of the IADB-World Bank-LACEA. He has been board member at LACEA, the Nutrition Research Institute, and the National Council of Labor in Peru. He has held a teaching position at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and Universidad del Pacifico in Peru, and has been a visiting researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr. Saavedra holds a PhD in economics from Columbia University. JOSAe R. MOLINAS VEGA is a Senior Economist with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region at the World Bank. His research interests include social capital, rural development, the political economy of social service delivery, economics of education, poverty analysis, and applied macroeconomics. He has been Academic Director of the Master's Program in Economics and professor of development economics and macroeconomics at the Catholic University of Asuncion. Before joining the World Bank, he was Director of Instituto Desarrollo in Asuncion. Jose holds a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame, USA.

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